A straightforward solution to improve the pulse width of industrial grade Yb-doped lasers is using a nonlinear pulse compressor. Various nonlinear pulse compression techniques, such as hollow-core fiber (HCF) [1]}, [2]}, multi-pass cell [3]}, [4]}, [5]} and multiple-plate continuum (MPC) [6]}, [7]}, [8]}, have been explored and applied to metrology, time-resolved spectroscopy [9]}, generation of coherent extreme ultraviolet [10]} and terahertz radiation [11]}. HCF compressors can deliver exceptionally high pulse energy and beam quality, but are extremely sensitive to beam pointing fluctuation. Both multi-pass cell and MPC implement spectral broadening in a cascaded fashion. Multi-pass cell accumulates a small nonlinear phase shift \(\phi _{NL}\)  per pass, while the intensity is maintained by (chirped or unchirped) focusing mirrors. The overall spectral broadening (depending on the total \(\phi _{NL}\) ) can be large after many passes, and the resulting spectral shape is highly symmetric due to the distributed nature of nonlinear effect. However, multi-pass cell requires special mirrors with specific group-delay dispersion (GDD) over octave-spanning bandwidth to achieve sub-10 fs pulses [12]}. Besides, the lengthy optical path caused by multiple bounces in the cell could be a trouble for temporal synchronization in pump-probe applications. In contrast, traditional MPC pushes \(\phi _{NL}\)  close to the limit in each plate, while the risk of self-focusing-induced damage or wavefront distortion can be managed by adjusting the thicknesses of and distances between the plates. Single-cycle pulse can be generated in a simple optical setup without demanding alignment [6]}. The downside of MPC is the poorer temporal pulse contrast due to asymmetric spectral shape (when self-steepening matters) coupled with stronger higher-order dispersion. Customized chirped mirrors are often required to effectively remove the nonlinear chirp [8]}.
